An anonymous reader quotes an Ars Technica report: People shopping for a Fire TV on Amazon are likely looking for a cheap and easy way to get an affordable 4K smart TV. When Amazon announced its first own-brand TVs in September 2021, he presented them as being of “great value”. But device owners will soon pay part of these savings in the form of advertisements displayed more visibly. Charlotte Maines, director of Fire TV advertising, monetization and engagement at Amazon, detailed the new types of ads Amazon is selling on Fire TVs. In a StreamTV Insider Report Starting Nov. 1, Amazon said the new ads will help advertisers reach an average of 155 million unique viewers per month. Some of the changes targeting advertisers, like connecting display ads with specific in-stream video ads, seem harmless enough. Others could compromise owners’ viewing experience.
For example, Amazon is preparing to make Alexa with generative AI more useful for searching for content on Fire TVs. That could help Alexa, which has struggled alongside other tech giants’ voice assistants, generate significant revenue. Amazon gets money every time someone interacts with digital content through Alexa. However, the company is doubling down on this idea by also pairing ads with generative AI on Fire TVs. When users ask Alexa to help them find media with queries like “play the show with the guy who plays the lawyer in Breaking Bad,” they see ads relevant to the search. (…) Finally, Amazon is adding “sponsored pop-up tiles” that use machine learning to serve ads based on the genre of content or search term viewed by the Fire TV user.
Amazon Fire TV users will also start seeing banner ads on the device’s home screen for things that have nothing to do with entertainment or media. This ad space was previously reserved for advertising media and entertainment, which at least made the ads more relevant. Amazon opening up ad space to more types of advertisers is similar to a move Google TV made earlier this year. Banner ads will take up the first slot in the rotating hero area, which Amazon says is the first thing Fire TV users will see.
